Tortoise's Floating Apartment

It has been a while since I built my first tortoise house,and after a deep thought, I decided to upgrade the house to bigger and larger space so the tortoise can exercise more. Plus, the tortoise grows quite quick, large space will definitely be better option.

Materials you need for this instructables are:

1) Plywood or any other wood board.

2) wood Screws

3) Screw gun

4) steel cable

5) L shape metal bracket

6) Reptile lamp

7) Acrylic board

8) Driller

9) White fence from gardening store

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Step 1: Cut Boards

Starting by cutting the wood boards to desired dimension (unit: cm).

I used solid wood board for aesthetic purpose. Boards' thickness is 18mm.

I attached a pic to show the desired dimension to cut the boards and put together with wood screws.

Next, get in touch with acrylic board supplier, and cut the boards as the pic shows. Acrylic board is 5mm thick. The wider one can be any color you like, This is for the floor. The long slim one is for fencing and needs to be transparent.

Place the big wide acrylic board to the base of the wood box.

Step 2: Fencing

Screw tight the long piece wood with long slim acrylic board together first with 6 screws. 2 to left, mid, and right

respectively. Once done that, fix the set to the wood box with screw from left and right to screw tight the box and

long wood board together like the pic shows.

The reason to have see through acrylic at bottom is that little child can observe tortoise easily from their height, and if

I am sitting on sofa, I can easily see tortoise movement easily as well.

The color for see-through acrylic is dark brown, this way tortoise can barely see the outside, but people outside can

see inside easily if lamp is on.

Step 3: Floating Floor

I bought this white fence from gardening store and I wish to make it as the floating floor. I used L shape metal bracket to fix 3 corner of the fence to the wooden box. Bought a steel cable from nearby bicycle shop as it is cable for braking system. Cut it to the desired length. Then I drilled hole to the corner of the white fence and same location to the ceiling of the wooden box. Let the cable through from the ceiling top to the fence. Get a small wood piece with

drilled holes on that too, let the cable through and tight a knot and you then get a floating floor.

Step 4: Accessories

Grab a small peice of wood and make it as a slope to the floating floor. I bought a piece of rubber-like material and

stick it to the slope, this will add friction while tortoise climbing up.Screw a L shape bracket to the ceiling for reptile

lamp to clamp onto. Add a thermometer to the wall and finally I added my previous 3D printed cable management piece to the box and it is done.